Blog – Helping Mental Health patients turn the corner

Penny Clayton is a Mental Health Practitioner within a North Yorkshire Primary Care Network. She has been in post for three years and is part of a team of three professionals dealing with a variety of mental health conditions including a recent rise in work-related stress.

Our PCN covers York and Selby. As we’re based in primary care, patients can book an appointment with us the same way they’d book a GP appointment, either come into the surgery, phone or fill in the online form and it can be referred through to us via the triage system.

Asking for help with mental health

We’re finding that people that would never ever have asked for help with their mental health are coming to see their GP because they’re really struggling. As a rule, it’s mild to moderate cases that we deal with, and it can be anything mental health related. We see a lot of people impacted by bereavement, however and the big one is stress – so many people are experiencing this at the minute.

We’re also seeing the impact of social media, especially with younger people. I see people that are really anxious because they are worrying about normal human reactions such as nervousness in the lead up to exams. We educate them about mental health, what to class as normal emotions and what might be signs of illness and how to separate the two. This helps counteract the huge amount of misinformation that can be found on the internet

Making positive changes

Sometimes we’ll give patients an action plan for the next two weeks ahead of a follow-up appointment if they aren’t able to follow our advice for whatever reason. But I’m encouraged day in, day out by those that do go away and put things in place and then come back and tell us they’re feeling a lot better. Because of the work they’ve done and the advice they’ve taken, there’s no need to refer them on to talking therapies or secondary care mental health services as their mental health has improved. You might have only seen them three or four times, but you’ve helped them turn the corner.

I see a lot of patients that are going through difficult times, whether it’s domestic violence, divorce or a single parent with children consistently getting into trouble at school and that set appointment slot every other week is enough to level things back out again.

Our area has a big student population. I recently saw a young man who was really struggling – He was looking for work and he wasn’t sleeping or eating properly.

We did some behavioural activation work with him, introducing structure to his day, along with other small improvements. This was all over a few weeks.

I thought we would carry on working together for a while. However when he came back to see me it turned out to be his last. He said ‘I’ve done absolutely everything you’ve told me to do and it’s worked, thank you for helping me change my life.”

Easy to access

For the older generation going to their GP is routine. It’s a normal thing to do.

Coming to see a mental health practitioner in the surgery helps breaks down barriers because they’re coming to the surgery and not a mental health hospital or the equivalent. There is definitely a lot of positives to this, including the fact we can relieve pressure on the GPs.

The continual daily demand on GP surgeries can be overwhelming and we’re one of the services that are helping lighten the load. On average patients wait around two weeks to see us. This frees up appointment time for GPs to see patients with things that only they can help with.

We have a positive impact on other mental health teams as well. We can catch people early, so they aren’t struggling and struggling and then hitting that crisis point, which then results in them having to access secondary services, who are often finding it difficult to keep their heads above water with the increasing level of demand.

Rewards of the role

After leaving my sociology and law degree, I got a job as a healthcare assistant at a psychiatric hospital. I realised that mental health nursing is what I want to do and so I did my training. Growing up, I witnessed what mental illness can do to people and their families and this made me even more passionate about helping people. I couldn’t do any other job.

My day can vary so much, from speaking to someone experiencing a relationship breakdown, to supporting someone who is very unwell and in need of referral to a hospital. I get to speak to so many kinds of people, often with very complex situations and no one day is the same. However, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 Mental Health Practitioner is just one of the roles in the multi-disciplinary primary care team. For more information visit NHS England — North East and Yorkshire » Meet your General Practice Team